


The White Blue Yellow Pink Pearl

by IspeakfortheQueen



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Homeworld headcanons, Pearl Backstory, Pre-Gem War, The Great Diamond Authority, The Great Toy Fair Leak of 2018, pearl has a little crush at the end, servitude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 12:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13763784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IspeakfortheQueen/pseuds/IspeakfortheQueen
Summary: She’s poofed and reforms with a pink skirt, a close approximation to Pink Diamond’s appearance modifiers, though the blues and yellows still won’t come out of her dress.  The Pearl doesn’t care and knows the rest of the Authority doesn’t care.  She’s old enough now to know that she’s nothing more than an unwanted hand me down.





	The White Blue Yellow Pink Pearl

**Author's Note:**

> No actual spoilers in here beyond the dress design I already had these headcanons about Pearl being passed around between the Diamonds before the February '18 toy design leak. The *still* ambiguous color schemes kinda nailed it on the head for me.

She’s made for White Diamond, to begin with. Like other Pearls she is designed with the image of her intended owner in mind. She has a gem placed on her forehead, pale skin, and her short hair is styled into spikes. She is told that it is an honor to serve as a Diamond’s _personal_ Pearl. Being new to all this she looks forward to being presented as a gift to the esteemed leader. 

After the grand bestowing of the Pearl to the Diamond, life as usual carries on. The Pearl finds that despite constantly being in close quarters with such a highly regarded personage, "life as usual" is very boring. There’s the expected Pearl work to be done: opening doors, tidying chambers, keeping records from important meetings, dancing when her Diamond is in low spirits (though this is rare, the empire is expanding rapidly and White Diamond is nothing less than thrilled by it), all those little tasks that are so menial that no one of a higher rank could possibly deign to perform them. 

White Diamond’s court is composed of such glaring whites, silvers, and light greys, it’s almost blinding. All other colors fade away in the brightness of it all. It’s after visiting Blue Diamond’s court that White Diamond’s Pearl starts getting ideas. One day she reports to her duties with a light blue sash around the waist of her gauzy skirt.

“Did I ask you to change your appearance modifiers, Pearl?”

“Oh! No, my Diamond, you didn’t!” she chirps, “I just liked the color, I thought it would be nice to change things up.”

“Do you like the color blue, Pearl?”

“Well it matches my eyes, and it’s a little different don’t you think? Different in a good way, I mean.” The Pearl twirls around, gazing proudly at the blue sash she’s manifested, blithely unaware of her owner’s growing frustration.

“If you like the color blue so much, then why don’t you go serve in Blue Diamond’s court?” White Diamond’s voice is calm, but there is a steely edge to it that wasn’t there before. It is suddenly brought to the Pearl’s attention that this is her first transgression against a Diamond. She is poofed on the spot, before being sent to Blue Diamond’s court as punishment.

\- - -

The difference between White Diamond and Blue Diamond is that White Diamond is always calm and placid, even when she is angry. Blue Diamond displays and changes her emotions at an alarming speed. Blue Diamond’s court is lively so long as Blue Diamond is lively. When Blue Diamond is aggravated or bereft, so is the rest of the court. 

The Pearl, previously of White Diamond's Court, is not so lucky as to be the _personal_ Pearl of Blue Diamond, not with her gem placement, but she does get to work closely with Blue Diamond’s personal Blue Pearl. The Blue Pearl is silent most of the time and after a while, the silence begins to get on the Pearl’s nerves. She wouldn't have thought she had nerves, yet there they were, irritation tickling at her whenever she asked a question and the Blue Pearl responded in a meek syllable upholding the way things were, if she responded at all.

One day Blue Diamond has an outburst that leaves the entire court in tears. Blue Diamond rushes off of her throne and leaves the room, asking no one to follow her. No one dares disobey a Diamond. The Pearls are left behind, standing complacently in a row, wiping their eyes. No one truly knows what has made Blue Diamond upset this time.

The bitter sorrow that has flooded the Pearl’s mind turns into a prick of annoyance. 

“You don’t actually like this, do you?” the Pearl asks the other Blue Pearls.

The Blue Pearls look down solemnly, their hands clasped to their chests.

The Pearl huffs and looks to Blue Diamond’s personal Pearl, the one whose hair covers her eyes.

“How do you stand this?” the Pearl asks, smearing the tears away from her own cheeks with the back of her hand.

“It is an honor to share the emotions of a Diamond,” mutters the Blue Pearl.

“Yes, it is I suppose, but what about when she feels miserable?”

“We should be miserable because our Diamond is miserable. It’s only right,” states the Blue Pearl absolutely.

“But we don’t know what she’s miserable about half the time! How am I supposed to actually feel any sympathy for her if we don’t know why she goes off crying like that! Are we just supposed to stand around quietly and take all her sadness even if we don’t want to?!” The White Pearl has gotten so caught up in her frustrations that she hasn’t noticed the other Pearl’s sending her quiet signals to shut up.

“Yes,” says a loud voice from behind her. Blue Diamond had returned. “Because it’s not about what a Pearl wants.”

\- - -

She rematerializes several times in a blue uniform and they poof her several times to get her out of that color. She’s being transferred to Yellow Diamond’s court and blue is hardly a suitable anymore. The first few times she reforms in blue she’s just being stubborn. After that she realizes she’s can’t quite get it out of her system and she's apologetic about it. She’s finally allowed to have blue on her sleeves. Her superiors decide that at least they’ll be able to tell which one’s the broken Pearl.

Yellow Diamond is terrifying but Pearl respects her authority a little more than Blue Diamond’s so she stays in the court for quite some time. The Pearls are ignored for the most part, and therefore allowed to speak freely amongst themselves when they are not needed. Yellow Diamond internalizes her emotions and the broken Pearl is happy to not have to endure so many tearful outbursts. 

There is much more dancing on this job, Yellow Diamond likes to watch her servants dance when she detects a glimmer of feeling pushing out of herself. The broken Pearl likes dancing. She like’s it so much she starts creating her own dances, experimenting with rhythm and movement that often puts her out of line with the choreography of the others.

\- - -

During this time, Pink Diamond, the youngest of the Diamond Authority, is becoming more demanding with age. She wants a ship. She wants a proper court. She wants her own Pearl. The other Diamonds are loathe to give her anything, for fear she doesn’t have enough experience or discipline to control her own quarter of the empire. She throws tantrum after tantrum and the Diamonds are forced to concede to her demands. Still, they refuse to give her anything _too_ nice. They give her the bottom half of the Diamond Ship, reign over the abandoned Kindergartens, and a satellite zoo full of disgusting aliens collected from various planets conquered over the eons. When she demands a Pearl, Yellow Diamond is all too happy to let go of the broken Pearl that can’t dance properly with the others.

So the broken Pearl finds herself passed around one more time. She’s poofed and reforms with a pink skirt, a close approximation to Pink Diamond’s appearance modifiers, though the blues and yellows still won’t come out of her dress. The Pearl doesn’t care and knows the rest of the Authority doesn’t care. She’s old enough now to know that she’s nothing more than an unwanted hand me down. In the event that something goes awry in Pink Diamond’s fledgling court, she'll be passed off to a member of the aristocratic class, probably a Sapphire, and then a Quartz soldier, and then a Nephrite pilot, and then a Peridot technician, and all away down the line of different Gem castes, until she belonged to no one but herself.

It's meant to be a cruel joke at first, one that makes the Pearl laugh coldly when she reflects on her wayward life. The thought of having no one but her self, sends a cold chill up her spine but she gives it further consideration. Such a thing is absurd, but would it be that bad? As she follows Pink Diamond’s tiny raging form from place to place, the Pearl wonders if it's possible for a Pearl to be her own Gem. It would be unconventional, yes, and obviously the entire concept is an impossible hypothetical, but wouldn’t it be fun?

The Pearl takes to daydreaming about an independent life during the humdrum of her daily tasks. Now whenever she thinks about it a little spark of warmth blooms in her chest and spreads all over her form. Where would she live? What would she do if she had the free time? Maybe she would make her own dances, or maybe she would learn to use a sword like the Quartz soldiers, or maybe she would take a spaceship and fly off to a planet of her very own. In all these scenarios she is alone, because logically no one would want the company of a defective Pearl and she doesn’t want to owe anything to anyone in her imagined life. So many ideas fill her mind during her time in Pink Diamond’s Court. At the very least it distracts from Pink Diamond’s growing demands for armies and planets.

\- - -

One day the Pearl is meant to be follow her Diamond to a presentation for a prototype of a new zoo. She wonders if the aliens in the zoos like to be kept under lock and key. From what she’s seen they don’t seem to notice that they are being held captive. She wonders what the planets they came from are like and this leads her off on another bout of daydreaming. What would it be like to visit another planet? Her head is light years away, so the Pearl doesn’t notice that her Diamond has taken a sharp left turn and that she herself has kept walking forward, until she’s in the center of a cluster of Rose Quartz soldiers and quite literally bumps into one of them. 

The other Quartzes jeer and laugh. “Pink’s Pearl really is a dud after all!”

“Wow this one’s a space cadet!”

“I see why Yellow didn’t want her!”

The Pearl pays no mind to them. In truth, she’s stopped worrying about what others think of her the moment she made that tiny transgression against White Diamond all that time ago. The rest was simple survival, even if she wasn't too good at it. It’s simple survival that keeps her blustering out fast and nervous apologies to the particular Rose Quartz she’s bumped into. She’s tall, even for a Quartz, and has huge pink ringlets. Her gem is in the center of her torso. The Pearl actually thinks the Rose Quartz looks quite beautiful but of course she doesn’t mention that in her apology. 

“Are you alright?” the Rose Quartz asks with genuine concern in her voice. She’s looking at the Pearl with soft brown eyes that aren’t angry like a Diamond’s and aren’t leering like the other Quartzes eyes.

The Pearl jumps at that. Shock and embarrassment mix together and send an electric jolt through her form. The Pearl gives a curt nod, gives the Diamond salute, and then turns on her heels to catch up with her Diamond.

After that her fantasies change. The next time she steals a spaceship in her dreams, she steals it with the help of the beautiful Rose Quartz.


End file.
